'?'3t>033 



POESY: 

AN ESSAY IN RHYME 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



#ii0siniait m)i '^\i^\xmm Societies 



COLUMBIAN COLLEGE, 

WASHINGTON, D. C, 



8MITH80KIAN INSTITUTION, ON THE EVENI:;G OF THE 28th OF JUNE, 1859. 



i BY 

JOHN R. THOMPSON. 



WASHINGTON : 

PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETIES. 
1859. 



POESY: 

AN ESSAY IN RHYME 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



€ii0siniaii attlt llljilo])l)rcraaH Societies 



COLUMBIAN COLLEGE, 

WASHINGTON, D. C, 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, ON THE EVENING OF THE 28th OF JUNE. 1859. 



^ 



'b 



JOHN K. THOMPSON. 






WASHINGTON : 

PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETIES. 
1859. 






THOMAS M GILL, 
JTEAM PEESS PRINTER, 

WASHINQTON, D. C. 



CORRESPONDENCE 



College Hill, D. C, Oct. 8lh, 1859. 
Dear Sir : I am directed again to call your attention to the resolu- 
tions of the Enosinian and Philophrenian Societies, passed at a joint meet- 
ing held on the 29th day of June last, thanking you for the very beautiful 
Poem recited before them on the evening of June 28th, and earnestly re- 
questing a copy for publication. Hoping you may now see fit to gratify 
this, their sincere desire, 

I am, with sentiments of respect. 

Your obedient servant, 

WM. L. WILSON. 
Jno. R. Thompson, Esq. 



Richmond, October 10, 1859. 
My Dear Sir: With my best thanks for your polite note, requesting for 
publication a copy of the Poem which I had the honor to recite, in June 
last, before the Literary Societies of Columbian College, I take pleasure in 
complying with your wishes. 

Yours, very truly, 

JNO. R. THOMPSON. 
Wm. L. Wilson, Esq. 



POESY. 



In ancient Greece, where Art, we know, was born, 

In the fresh gladness of her early morn ; 

When Learning, laurelled goddess, sweetly smiled 

Above the cradle of her fairest child — 

They kept in Athens sacred festival 

Of eloquence, and song, and wit, and all 

That made of Attica a classic land, 

From lofty Pindus to the shining strand: 

With music's lordly swell, the stately train 

Moved onward to Minerva's glittering fane, 

Where from the fervid lips of genius flowed 

The measured chorus and the sparkling ode, 

Pure as Ilissus, where its waters run 

A stream of flashing silver in the sun ; 

And thousand voices, mingling in the prean. 

Stirred the light wave upon the blue iEgean. 

Two thousand changeful years have passed away 

Of cruel havoc and of fell decay — 

The polished temples, 'neath the brilliant sky 

Of old Athena now in ruin lie ; 

And a deep pathos, a most tender pity 

Subdues the soul within the ancient city : 

The Ereehtheum — how each frag-ment shines ! 



POESY : AN ESSAY IN RHYME. 



What desolate beauty in the broken lines ! 
.The Parthenon — alas, the summer breeze 
Kisses no more at morn the perfect frieze 
Which once revealed the glory and the joy, 
Panathenaic, to the Grecian boy. 
But the great poems of the bards sublime 
Remain unwasted by the wreck of Time ; 
Graceful and calm, in symmetry severe. 
These wondrous temples of the mind appear ; 
And light, in richer flood than that which fills 
The smiling circuit of the'Athenian hills. 
Streams upon shaft and portico and floor, 
" The light that never was on sea or shore !" 

Well may we then the lyric mode combine 
With glowing eloquence, at Learning's shrine. 
When our Panathensea's rites we hold. 
Not with the gorgeous pomp and pride of old, 
Not yielding homage to the gods that reigned 
On high Olympus, as the mythos feigned, 
But with ascriptions of perennial praise 
To the brave singers of immortal lays ; 
And all who robe the beauteous form of Truth 
In the bright colors of unfading youth, 
From ^schylus to Shakspeare, from the trees 
Where Wisdom early strayed with Socrates, 
To the lone tower Avhere Newton's tireless eye 
Read the strange riddle of the midnight sky. 
Such rites we celebrate when Science calls 
Her favoured children to a hundred halls. 



POESY: AX ESSAY IN RHYME. 



To bless the guerdons, nobly won, whicli prove 
An Alma Mater's all-abidino; love ! 

You ask for rhymes, 3-ou l)id me idly seek 
To throw the soft enchantment of the Grreek 
O'er the rapt sense in a beguiling dream — 
Vain task ! but still be Poesy my theme : 
Turn with me then awhile, and learn the spell 
Its ministers have left on "flood and fell" — 
Summon the Past, and bid its voice rehearse 
Man's chequered story since the jirimal curse ; 
Or take Imagination's widest range 
O'er ivied battlement and moated arrange. 
And mark what renders most a people great, 
And still survives the ruin of the State ; 
How the long, joyous, pensive, tender strain 
Of the world's music, cheats the world of pain- 
How Fancy brightens with her magic rays 
The shadowy vista of departed days, 
And casts along the Ages' downward slope 
The blended hues of Memory and of Hope ! 

Soft 3'ou, my modest muse, nor rashly dare 
A flight so lofty through the realms of air : 
With a vague sense of littleness opprest 
I walk around the Theban eagle's nest, 
Conscious that could I steal his mighty wings, 
To me such very unfamiliar things 
Would be as useless as were Roman sandals 
To one of Attila's laro-e-footed Vandals — 



poesy: an essay in rhyme. 



And here the horrid old Horatian maxim, 

Which the poor rhymer's had so long to tax him, 

The bard remembers, and may fitly quote, 

(Though doubtless many have the line b}^ rote,) 

That neither gods nor men, in their distress, 

Nor yet the columns of the weekly press, 

Can view as other than a dreadful wrong 

The lowlier oiferings of tuneful song — 

A line which means, as certain critics think. 

That smaller poets should not deal in ink. 

And that until the mighty prophets come 

The part of Poesy is to be dumb. 

Dishonoured ever be the narrow rule 

Which claims no reverence in kind Nature's school, 

Which neither Summer's birds nor blooms obey 

In the glad minstrelsy of rising day. 

Your Miltons, Goethes, are an age apart. 

Meanwhile shall no one touch the world's sad heart ? 

The stately aloe's snowy bloom appears 

But once, we know, within a hundred years ; 

Because, forsooth, the aloe is the glory 

Of Chatsworth's notable conservatory. 

Shall not the modest daisy from the sod 

Turn its meek eyes in beauty up to God ? 

In nature's daily prayer, when comes the dawn 

To tell its beads upon the dewy lawn. 

Shall the sweet matins of the rosy hours 

Miss the pure incense of the little flowers ? 

Oh, gentle spirits, wheresoe'er you dwell, 

On breezy upland or in quiet dell, 



POESY: AN ESSAY IN RHYME. 



Whether you sing in solitude and shade, 

Or in the sullen, crowded haunts of trade, — 

Whose simple rhyming, in its artless grace, 

Has touched some hidden sorrow of the race, 

Or taught the world one humble lesson more 

Of subtle beauty all unknown before, 

Or soothed one heart, just when its need was sorest, 

With harmonies of ocean and of forest, — 

To you be ever honorable meed, 

In spite of captious Horace and his creed. 

While the great poets soar beyond the ken 

Of the world's toiling, heaving mass of men. 

Like the proud falcon quickly lost to view 

In the wide field of heaven's o'erarchino; blue, — 

You linger round the dwellings of our love, 

As birds that carol in the eaves above. 

And fill forever, as the days increase. 

Our homes with music and .our hearts with Deace. 



The Avorld has changed — there are who gravely doubt 

If the great epics have not long died out — 

No more in grandeur the Homeric line 

Repeats the story of a Troy divine — 

No more the jDealing medieval hymn 

Rolls down the shadowy canto, vast and dim, 

A minster, noblest of cathedral piles, 

Where Spencer rambles through his woodland aisles, — 

No more the high Miltonic verse reveals 

The glooms and glories of the awful seals — 



10 poesy: an essay in rhyme. 

In blaze supernal or in dread eclipse — 

Of some new uninspired Apocalypse : 

If these are "with tli' imperishable Past, 

The Epic surely had not sung its last ; 

For never swept across Time's ample stage 

An unimpassioned, unheroic age — 

And countless generations yet to be, 

In later eras of the world, shall see 

A life as worthy of the epic strain 

As that which fired the age of Charlemagne, 

And future masters of the lyre shall raise 

The swelling epos of our modern days. 

But while the amaranth waits for kingly brows, 

Some laurel wreaths our grateful love allows 

To him whose sunny genius lifts to light 

The meanest objects of our daily sight : 

Who seeks to brighten still the links that bind 

In blest communion all of human kind ; 

Or passion's tempest in the breast would calm 

With some sweet, lowly, penitential psalm : 

Such poets sow the seeds of truth and beauty 

To blossom into holy faith and duty — 

And though the tares of selfishness and pride 

Spring up to choke them upon every side", 

And many a tender gfhoot the world erases 

From the hard pavements of its market-places, 

Some fall on friendly soil, warm hearts and true, 

Where watered by affection's kindliest dew. 

They stretch their boughs into the upper air, 

And in due season richer fruitacie bear 



poesy: an essay ix rhyme. 



11 



Than fabled branches hung with globes of gold, 
Some thirty, fifty, some an hundred fold ! 



Would'st knoAV the value of a simple rhyme 

Sent down the widening, deepening stream of time ? 

Let Memory seek, amidst the august scenes 

So recent — scarce a lustrum intervenes, 

The chamber where the dying Webster lay, 

And heard the elegiac melodies of Gray 

Mingling with ocean's everlasting roar 

Borne through the casement from the neighb'ring shore, 

The deathless music of th' immortal mind 

With Nature's grandest symphonies combined. 

Or note the contrast well afforded here 

And let the triumph of the bard appear. 

Two monumental tributes to the brave 

Mark one a famous, one a lonely grave — 

Earth's proudest city, gay with gilded spires 

And domes which kindle in the sunset's fires. 

Guards one, with marble muses looking down 

Where sleeps the dust that wore the Caesar's crown : 

The universal Earth, the common air 

Contain the other — it is everywhere, 

As far as mighty England's form of speech, 

Blown wide upon the wings of fame, can reach, 

Before the mental eye, its shape it rears 

Above a turf bedewed with grateful tears ; 

And when Napoleon's obsequies, with all 

Their gorgeous pageantry of plumes and pall, 



12 POESY : AN ESSAY IN RHYME. 

Have faded quite away from man's esteem, 

Like the swift splendours of a passing dream ; 

When the proud chapel shall itself display 

A shattered monument of sad decay — 

And queenly Paris shall have shared the fate 

Of Tadmor overthrown and desolate ; 

That plaintive Monody, whose numbers tell 

Of him that bravely at Corunna fell — 

His silent burial near the midnight camp, 

By the pale moonbeam and the glimmering lamp, 

Shall still the cruel waste of years defy, 

Enduring cenotaph of Poesy I 



WoukVst learn the fire and frenzy that belong 

To the hot verses of the battle-song ? 

Hark ! to the sounds that the exulting breeze 

Brings to our land across the rolling seas 

From distant Gallia's proud ancestral shores, 

Where to the fight the glittering column pours. 

The active Zouave, the gallant, gay Chasseur, 

Feel a new life and impulse in the stir — 

With ribbons decked, with faces bronzed and scarred. 

Move on the serried legions of the Guard, 

Whose steady look of fierce resolve befits 

The veteran chivalry of Austerlitz. 

Listen ! what thrilling words are these that greet 

The excited thousands of that crowded street ? 

Not freedom's flag the imperial line displays. 

But yet they sing, they shout the Marseillaise ! 



POESY : AN ESSAY IN RHYME. 13 



In vain the cautious monarch would repress 

That song's impassioned and resistless stress, 

Unchained as lightning, with electric start 

Its sudden thrill is sent from heart to heart : 

And if, oh Italy, devoted land, 

Once more begirt with beauty, thou shalt stand 

Erect among the nations of the earth, 

In all the strength of Freedom's second birth, 

The force that still must drive the avenging steel 

Lives in the lyric of Rouget de Lisle ! 



And yet not long, oh Poesy, not long, 

May War, earth's oldest and its direst Wrong, 

Demand thy paeans — Mercy waits and pleads 

With thee to celebrate her glorious deeds. 

While many a golden-roofed cathedral rings 

With the Te Deums of victorious kings, 

And from the crimsoned field, by combat riven, 

The blood of hecatombs appeals to Heaven, 

Thine is a higher, holier evangel, 

And thine the rustling pinions of the angel 

That comes, with softest sunshine in its face, 

To soothe and bless and elevate the race — 

Celestial visitant, that walked with Burns, 

"Following the plough," or when the poet turns 

To catch the Cotter's evening hymn of praise. 

Sung by the ingle's ever-cheerful blaze ; — 

That dwelt with Rydal's bard, all round the year, 

By the sweet margin of Winandermere ; 



14 poesy: an essay in rhyme. 

And flying wide across the dusky downs 
Into the heart of England's fevered towns, 
Unseen of other men, serenely stood 
Beside the form of gentle Thomas Hood, 
With drooping plumage and dejected eyes, 
By the dark river of the Bridge of Sighs ! 



The world has changed — there are who much deplore 

That the bright reign of Poesy is o'er — 

Who tell us that as man each year recedes 

From the sweet trustfulness of childhood's creeds. 

And sees these cherished blossoms die within 

The baleful glare of worldliness and sin — 

So, as the planet on its course is rolled. 

As age of iron follows age of gold, 

The dear illusion we would oiot resist 

Fades, like a curtain of dissolving mist, 

Before the glare of science, reaching far 

From wave to mountain, and from star to star. 

And still dethroning, disenchanting fast 

The idols and the idylls of the Past. 

We'll not believe it. Shall the windy ocean 

Stop the careering of its rhythmic motion. 

Or 'neath the moonlight, when the whirlwinds cease, 

No longer woo us to a dream of peace. 

Because a Maury, standing at the helm, 

Drives the proud bark of Science o'er its realm, 

Detects its viewless currents in their courses, 

And brings to measurement its mighty forces ? 



poesy: ax essay in rhyme. 



15 



Shall not the sun still seek the Jungfrau's side 
To deck with diamonds his majestic bride — 
Shall not the glacier's beryl-tinted caves, 
Beneath the glittering waste of icy waves, 
Still shake with hallelujahs, peal on peal, 
And all Chamouni's templed valley reel. 
From brawling Arve to pinnacled Aiguille, 
Because a learned botanist uncloses 
The scarlet petals of the Alpine roses. 
And some pale student asks the frozen arch 
The secret of the glacier's onward march ? 
Ah, " star-eyed Science !" Fancy claims in thee 
A loving sister of the World To Be — 
Admits each worthy, reverent son of thine 
As priest to worship at her radiant shrine, 
And comes with tenderest sorrow, in her turn, 
To place a garland upon Humboldt's urn. 



All, all are poets on whom God confers 

The gift of Nature's true interpreters ; 

While the eternal hills their anthems raise 

And swelling oceans vocalize His praise. 

But not alone from woods, and rocks, and streams, 

Niagaras and Alps, and starry gleams, 

Must the true poet catch his inspirations 

To chant the De Profundis of the nations — 

'Tis his to turn from Nature's outward things 

And trace, with prophet-glance, the hidden springs 

Of human life and action in the soul. 



16 POESY :' AN ESSAY IN RHYME. 



Whence the unceasing torrents rage and roll 

With headlong fury to the shoreless main, 

In thunder worthy of his loftiest strain. 

And not from cloud and rainbow must he draw 

The subtle principle of Beauty's Law. 

'Tis his to wander from purpureal skies 

And lovliest landscapes, with a glad surprise, 

And gaze delighted into Woman's eyes — 

And, as the languor-loving Cingalese, 

Whose look is bent on India's opal seas. 

Are ever mindful of the pearls that glow 

With lambent lustre in the deeps below — 

To mark therein the priceless gems that shine 

Of Truth and Purity and Faith Divine : 

And more than all 'tis his in joy to preach 

The glorious gospel of unfettered speech, 

And sing the high divinity of man 

By Freedom far removed from kingly ban ; 

Well may the noble theme inspire his rhyme 

In this our richly-favoured western clime. 

Whose banner streams against the sunset's bars 

And blends its baldric with the dripping stars, 

Where Peace has left her name upon the tide 

And through the Golden Gates the world's great navies ride ! 



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